Customer Reviews

Nervous Conditions: A Novel

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've always considered myself to be very understanding of women, especially women of the same stature and situation as the female characters of the book, but the book did expand my understanding of their condition. When I read the book I saw my mother who grew up in South Africa under situations similar to Tambu's. Although Tambu manages to rise from her condition with something on her hands, an education that is, most of these women get cought on the situation and they never escape it. I could relate to the book because I've seen how women are expected to conform to a male dominated community where they are not expected to question the men in their lives. As I've lived and am still living in modern South Africa for my whole 19 years I've seen and still see the Nyasha's that have to deal with the same men as in the book and still expected to be modern women. I found the book to be very true of the African women's situation and saw a reflection of somebody I know in Jeremiah. Here is a man who had to live in his brothers shadow for all his life. He is poor and lazy, and the only thing that he knows he has control over are the women in his life. I am not trying to sympathise with the character but his situation on the book should be understood. As a modern African man I've learnt to treat women as equals and although that may be there still exist a group of men who can't handle the truth. Tis book will help a lot of people in understanding how women, especially in rural communities, had to live and still live in Southern Africa. A powerful book and a great asset to African literature!

The troubles and turmoil of life often present us with guiding burdens, mountains that not only seem but are truly impossible to climb, and boundaries put in place to check even the strongest of wills. These mountains, boulders, and impassable rivers serve as a standard, a ceiling and a foundation; created by the society in which we take our very breath. So when we find ourselves stuck in the very system that we create, who can we blame? Who can we turn to for rescuing? These are the very questions that narrator Tambudzai learns to ask in Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel NERVOUS CONDITIONS.

Throughout her young adult life, Tambudzai witnesses many cultural tendencies of her people and struggles internally with what she is being taught versus what she observes and believes to be right. Aside from her Rhodesian homeland being colonized by the British, she also wrestles with getting an education in a country where an education is seen as wasted on women. The role of men over women in this very patriarchal society serves as the backbone of NERVOUS CONDITIONS and operates as a means to compare different women's struggle to survive that cast-iron system. Through Tambudzai's eyes, readers see how her cousin Nyasha rebels against her father - the family leader, proclaimed prince, and headmaster of the school at the Mission. Readers see the difference between Tambudzai's subservient mother and her mother's defiant sister. We also see how this society treats a woman just as educated as her husband. Following Tambudzai as she progresses towards higher learning and gains a deeper understanding of the world that surrounds her, literary audiences discover just how suffocating it is to deal with the burdens of simply surviving.

Many themes course through NERVOUS CONDITIONS making it an excellent novel for discussion and evaluation. Aside from the obvious men/women theme, a few other issues in the novel are the dangers and benefits of colonization, the necessity of education, and Christianity vs. traditional African religions. I also liked the importance of food and the role it played throughout the novel, especially at the end with Nyasha's rebellion. Exceptionally written, Dangarembga's novel, although about the learning period during a young teenager's life, is not child's play. This is a very adult novel filled with mature situations and intellectual food for meditation. The characters are well developed and the author takes time to draw scenes for her audience. You can see the poverty when she shows it to you just as well as you can see the surplus when it exists. Never have I read a novel that so intensely and effectively relays the burdens some people bear up under to simply be.

Reviewed by Natasha T.
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

I read this book for the first time when I was in Zimbabwe for an upper level African Literature class and thought I would die! As a young African woman I can totally relate to everything that Nyasha went through and having relatives like Tambu I foud her character completely believable. I have heard from a person who knew the author and her dad that the book is based on her life...don't quote me on this. But in that case it is even more impressive. I totally disagree with people namely one who said the book was flat and inconsistent. Things like this actually do happen and people do actually live their lives like this and this is Tsitsi's take on these issues and hers alone. I don't know, I could go on and on. I have read this book 7 times and have gotten some of my really good friends to read it just so they understand me and my culture. I might suggest we read it for my book club.

"I was not sorry when my brother died." Who would want their brother to die or even feel that way about a sibling? Tsitsi Dangarembga starts "Nervous Conditions" that way to catch the attention of her readers, and she did a fine job in catching mine. All the characters of this novel have determination and overcome difficult obstacles. Babamukuru is the uncle in the novel who is an inspiration for his niece, Tambudzai. She admires him: "Babamukuru, I knew, was different. He hadn't cringed under the weight of his poverty. Boldly, Babamukuru had defied it." Tambudzai bases her decision to go to school on the fact that her uncle has come to be someone everyone admires and trusts. She not only proves to her family that she can get an education, but she proves to herself that she can get out of the pool of poverty and ignorance. She begins her mission to raise money for school after she convinces her father to give her a plot of land to plant her own crops. Dangarembga describes in her book the work that Tambudzai puts into her field. "By the time the sun rose I was in my field, in the first days hoeing and clearing; then digging holes thirty inches apart, with a single swing of the hoe, as we had been taught in our gardaen periods at school; then dropping the seeds into them, two or three at a time, and covering them with one or two sweeps of my foot; then waiting for the seeds to germinate and cultivating and waiting for the weeds to grow and cultivating again." Her brother, on the other hand, receives the opportunity to get an education without having to work. Unfortunately, because of health difficulties he dies, and as a result she gets the opportunity to prove to her uncle that she is capable of achieving in school as well as in life. Moving to the mission gives her the chance to learn about her uncle's family as well as learning to adapt to different environment that is beyond where she comes from. Learning that not all families are perfect, she is faced with her cousin's eating disorder and the fact that her uncle will not tolerate any of his children to rebel against him or do anything to give his family a gad name. He hits his own daughter because he does not stand for her to raise her voice. "Babamukuru, gathering himself within himself so that his whole weight was behind the blow he dealt Nyasha's face. 'Never,' he hissed. 'Never,' he repeated, striking her other cheek with the back of his hand, 'speak to me like that.'" Such conflict within a family she admired was hard for Tambudzai to deal with or understand. In reading "Nervous Conditions," I have come to understand that cultures may be different but at the same time similar. There were instances that I felt I understood what characters were feeling for a minute. Take for example when Tambudzai felt no one had confidence in her and in what she was doing for herself. Having no one believe in you can encourage you to do more for yourself. That's what having self-confidence is all about. I felt that Tambudzai demostrated that through out the book as she was faced with many obstacles she eventually overcame. I recommend this book to anyone who loves to read or does not like to read. It grabs your attention in the beginning and takes you along on every adventure the characters surpass.

Seeing no customer reveiws from Africa I feel obliged to give my point of veiw. My brother bought the book as part of his english course at university. I was really not interested in reading it as I had a bad experience with a similarly themed book - Down Second Avenue by Ezekiel Mphahlele. I found DSA to be overly inflamitory in an already uneasy political climate. Were DSA centered on the problems of the country as a whole and felt rather rushed; NC was more free flowing and people orientated ahich made it a much beter book in my oppinion. Tsitsi Dangarembga brings people of all nations together in this touching and deeply powerful portrayal of the offhand treatment of woman in not only Rhodesia but the world today.

The voice of the narrator, plantive and engaging, retrospective and sensitive, is the jewel of the story. Although her lovely spirit and shrewd perspective on people/relationships propelled me through the book at a rapid pace, I found the plot quite empty. The story line, mostly founded on mundane details of her challenging daily life, feels dull and predictable. However, in spite of the lack of plot, the most important aspect of the book-- its main value to many readers-- is its thematically rich stew of commentary on gender roles/relations, sexuality, race, class, poverty, family dynamics, love, education, etc.

I gave book 3 stars because, although i fell in love with the narrator, the plot was too meandering and vacant to really make a good story. I also felt the ending, like the plot, was sort of half an ending and very lacking. In the end though, the story, themes, and the characters were so rich that they will stick with me for quite a while.

Read this book if you fulfill at least one of the following:

1) You want to read a tale that tackles intimate yet universal themes
2) You want to hear the too rarely heard voice of an african woman
3) You want a book that is poetic and academic at the same time
4) You are looking for an emotionally intricate read of personal dynamics
5) You need a speedy read for an airplane ride, book report, etc
6) You love books with insightful, shrewd observations of very real characters and family dynamics

I started this book on the train to work this morning, and stayed up to finish it. The story is engaging, the main characters sympathetic. But what kept me reading was the deft folding-in of a hundred little details of Zimbabwean life and culture.

It's a consciousness-raising novel, trumpeting its themes -- feminism, colonialism, and mental illness -- more loudly and more often than the modern reader expects. But it's not naive about those themes. Colonialism, as seen here, impoverishes and distorts traditional society; but traditional society so oppresses women that their only route to power and independence is through the colonial education system.

As other reviewers have noted, this is a suitable book for teens, in that is neither obscene nor violent. More than that, it's authentic foreign literature with a heroine their age. -- Suzanne Demitrio, demitrio@hotmail.com

For anyone who lived under colonial occupation or grew up in those parts of the world where the resident population has been made alien in their own country will appreciate this book. The writing is superb and the story was most touching. Tsitsi Dangarembga really gets at the essence of what colonialism and settler-politics meant in Zimbabwe. It's a personal story about a girl growing into a woman and having to confront the fact that her society and family are not the most girl-friendly. She struggles for an education but then what kind of an education is it when her worth as a human being is questioned by essentially foreign institutions. I cried so much at the end of this story. It reminded me very much of my own experience in missionary school. A very powerful book.

You know, I was really looking forward to writing this review. "Nervous Conditions" is a truly wonderful book that manages to provide endless topics for discussion. All pleasure at the prospect writing this review was taken from me, however, as I was finishing the book this afternoon. I was reading while having dinner at a local restaurant when a woman came in and was seated at a table near me. I noticed that she kept looking at the book, trying to see the cover. Eventually I looked up and made eye contact. She looked squarely at me and said: "You can't possibly understand that book." I didn't ask if this was because I am not black or because I am not a woman (she was both). I also didn't ask if it was because I wasn't raised in Zimbabwe, or a pre-industrial society, or in the sixties, or go to a medical school in London (she, presumably, also experienced none of these, except for being a black woman). I simply told her that I thought I would go ahead and finish the book as I was so close anyway. I then proceeded to not look up from the book until I left the restaurant.

Now I feel as if by writing a review I will be trying to prove to the world that perhaps I do understand. That I am so sympathetic and empathic that I can completely understand the emotions in the story I have just read (for the third time). In short, I now feel as if writing a review would be a defensive act. I don't like being put in that position by a woman I don't know who said six words to me in a restaurant.

All I will say for now is that this is a wonderful book. I recommend it for everybody. And if you are ever reading it in a restaurant, don't look up.

Dangarembga's novel tells an inspiring novel about the strength of women in post-colonial Rhodesia. The poignant narrative about Tambu and her family creates parallels between the oppressive nature of a patriarchial family structure and the colonial system of government. This novel is a must read for those interested in post-colonial literature. The novel also serves as an inspirational story for young women of all races...